The road is a messy, chaotic place. Kids dashing into the road between parked cars. Hard to spot, hydroplane-inducing puddles. Surviving it all means knowing how to slam the pedals or swing the steering wheel without losing control. It's enough to make any robocar quiver.

Most autonomous vehicle control software is deliberately designed for well-constrained driving that's nice, calm, and under control. Not only is this a little bit boring, it's also potentially less safe: If your car autonomous vehicle has no experience driving aggressively, it won't know how to manage itself if something goes wrong. At Georgia Tech, researchers are developing control algorithms that allow small-scale autonomous cars to power around dirt tracks at ludicrous speeds. They presented some this week at the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm, Sweden. Using real-time onboard sensing and processing, the little cars maximize their speed while keeping themselves stable and under control.